Jack the Ripper theories
Jan. 14th, 2003 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenrileyRight, so I said I'd post them but didn't get a chance last night. Forgive any misspellings or whatnot today as I didn't get to bed until after midnight but was awakened first by the telephone (wrong number, of course) at 5:30 this morning and then by Alex at 6. Blah. I'm sleepy. Mistakes with grammar and spelling will more than likely abound in this entry.
Now, onto the
I already stated why I do not believe any of the suspects from the past 100 years could have been Jack the Ripper. Now I shall comment on Patricia Cornwell's theory. She is of the belief that Jack the Ripper was none other than famous London artist Walter Sickert. And I think she's right. So does the leading expert on Walter Sickert, the woman who wrote his biography and is the person to consult about anything having to do with the man. He was an extremely intelligent man. He was a handwriting expert and could write in not only numerous different styles, but was also ambidextrous. He loved to write letters, often writing well over 600 a year to friends, family, and newspaper editorials. He was born with a fistule of the penis and required three different surgeries to repair it. This was at a time when anestisia was not often used, and what was used when it was used usually caused extreme vomitting. This means Walter, as a small child, went through at least one of these surgeries (the last at age 5) fully awake and concious of not only what was going on, but fully feeling the pain of someone inserting a knife into his penis and cutting it open from the inside to repair the fistule. Those surgeries left him with an extremely small, malformed, and non-functional penis. As an adult, he had all the sexual desire, but no way to relieve it, causing much frustration. He believed his mother was a sinner because she had an incestious relationship with her father when she was a schoolgirl, though she did not at the time know he was her father. Her mother was a dancer, unmarried, and left her daughter when the girl was 12... that was the start of the incestious relationship. Walter believed his deformaties were because his mother's womb was "tainted". He had a great distaste for women of lower class because of this. According to his sister, a humanitarian who wrote a very censored biography of her childhood, Walter was an obsessive and often violent little boy. He was wicked smart, but often drew violent images, even as a child. He was obsessed with Shakespeare and often forced his friends and siblings to act out some of the more unpleasent scenes. He was a very controlling person. He dominated everybody, even his own mother. He was unreasonable, but very rational. He rationalized everything. He did not abide by rules. He often changed rules of games to suit his purpose. He was cruel to other children and even teachers. He believed nobody was as smart as he was. He was meticulous, often drawing small pictures on a grid and then using mathmatics to enlarge the grid and the picture in it to make sure he didn't lose anything. All of his paintings were based in grids or formulas. He did not paint from his imagination. He painted what he saw. He was arrogant, felt no compassion for others or remorse over anything he'd done, and was manipulative. These are main traits of a psychopathic killer. Add rage, such as the kind one would have for feeling intense sexual desire but having no way to fulfill it, and you have a serial killer on your hands.
Scotland Yard recieved hundreds of Ripper letters, and the general theory was that most of them were fake since the handwriting differed, the spelling was impeccable in some and atrocious in others, the grammar was hit or miss. Patricia Cornwell got a handwriting expert to look at letters Sickert wrote to his friends and family and the numerous Ripper letters. Most of them were matched to Sickert. The atrocious spelling is a forced attempt to spell wrong, as when one misspells a word it is usually done phonetically and the misspell is the same throughout. However, in most of the Ripper letters, the he misspells the same word two or three different ways in the same letter. He would misspell a simple word like 'begin' but would properly spell words such as 'examination' and 'executed'. Many of the Ripper letters had sketches in them, sketches that showed up on napkins or papers Walter Sickert had drawn on and guarded in one of his many studios. Some of the papers dated before the letters. Some of the letters Ripper signed with R.St. or W.St. or W.R.St. and these have proved to be authentic Ripper letters. Sickert often signed his letters to friends using those abbreviations. His full name was Walter Richard Sickert. He was taunting the police. Giving them more and more clues that he knew they could not possibly solve. He signed many of his letters "Catch me if you can". Ripper needed the thrill of killing and killing but not being caught. Ripper thought he was smarter than everybody. That nobody in the world could figure out who he was because he was too smart for them. Some of the letters were signed "Mr. Nemo" and that was Sicket's stage name. It means "Mr. Nobody". Letters kept coming long after the Ripper murders "stopped", well into the 1900's. The police immediately dismissed them as fakes without even looking, since they thought the killing spree was over.
The Ripper wore disguises to cover his true identity, of that everyone is almost certain. Sickert was an actor as well as a painter. He had ample supply of stage make-up, wigs, false mustaches, costumes... everything anybody would need to change his appearance, even his height if he wanted. Sickert had it all and knew how to properly use it. He carried around a Gladstone bag, much like a medical doctor's bag, that could easily hold a change of clothes. He liked to go to the theatre at night and "take the long way home" after a show. He'd sometimes disapear for days into one of his many studios that even his wives didn't know where they were. Most of his studios were later revealed to be in or around the East End, where the murders took place. Once, in the early 1900's, Sickert "went crazy" one night and dragged his wife and her friend out into the cold fog. It was in September. He dressed up in a hat and long coat, grabbed his Gladstone Bag, and led his wife and friend through the streets of the East End at a "maddening pace" stopping briefly at only five points... the five places the Ripper's victims were found.
Now, the crime scenes were not exactly private matter. In fact, as more murders happened, residents living next to a crime scene would often charge admittance to see the bloody scene after the body had been carted away. The details were reported in newspapers, but the pictures of the victims were not. Descriptions of their appreance were not very well done, if done at all. So very few people know what the women looked like. The only ones who would know what the prostitutes looked like AFTER death were the family that identified the body, the police, and the murderer himself. Walter Sickert painted numerous paintings in the early 1900's depicting grizzly murder scenes, or scenes of women with "shadowy" figures standing behind them, faces peering out of the shadows. Some of his paintings were meant to disguise death, but they look remarkably similar to Ripper crime scenes. Most of the dead women in his paintings, or women with faces in the shadows, look frighteninly like portraits of the murdered prostitutes. He did a painting in 1908 titled Jack the Ripper's Bedroom. He had painted his own bedroom. Look at Summer Afternoon and without even thinking to look for a crime scene, it looks like a man sitting on the bed of a dead woman, in a scarely similar position as some of the Whitechapel victims. Ennui has the telling part in the background, in a painting within the painting.
It is also believed that the Ripper murders did not stop after number 5. They simply stopped being attributed to him, as they started to happen sporatically all over England and France, where Sickert spent a great deal of his time. Patricia Cornwell researched numerous prostitutes that had their throats slit, where they died and where they lived. Many of them died within miles of wherever Sickert happened to be living at the time.
Patricia Cornwell has DNA evidence and is trying to get more. What she has so far is not entirely conclusive and I have yet to fully understand DNA. But I'm working on that, and when I can get a better understanding and therefore, a better ability to explain the DNA evidence they've collected, I'll do so. If you don't want to wait, read the book! She explains everything much better than I have. I'm still doing my own research into Walter Sickert, but I must say, the more I learn about the man, the more he sounds like he really was Jack the Ripper. The more and more I look at his paintings, the more they scare me. He was not a sane man, whether he was Jack the Ripper or not.
So there are some of the theories in the book. Read it for yourself. Do your own research. Come to your own conclusions. I, myself, believe she may be right.
I will warn you now. If, after reading that, you decide to read the book, don't read it when you are alone or at night. The facts were scary before, but now that she's got a plausible suspect, they are even more frightening. I've scared myself silly before with that book. I spent all last week sitting up until 10:30 when Jeff would get home because the book and my research into Sickert himself was enough to scare me silly. Also, try to have some pleasant background music on. Nothing haunting or deep... something silly and upbeat. It'll help. Just trust me.
Now, onto the
I already stated why I do not believe any of the suspects from the past 100 years could have been Jack the Ripper. Now I shall comment on Patricia Cornwell's theory. She is of the belief that Jack the Ripper was none other than famous London artist Walter Sickert. And I think she's right. So does the leading expert on Walter Sickert, the woman who wrote his biography and is the person to consult about anything having to do with the man. He was an extremely intelligent man. He was a handwriting expert and could write in not only numerous different styles, but was also ambidextrous. He loved to write letters, often writing well over 600 a year to friends, family, and newspaper editorials. He was born with a fistule of the penis and required three different surgeries to repair it. This was at a time when anestisia was not often used, and what was used when it was used usually caused extreme vomitting. This means Walter, as a small child, went through at least one of these surgeries (the last at age 5) fully awake and concious of not only what was going on, but fully feeling the pain of someone inserting a knife into his penis and cutting it open from the inside to repair the fistule. Those surgeries left him with an extremely small, malformed, and non-functional penis. As an adult, he had all the sexual desire, but no way to relieve it, causing much frustration. He believed his mother was a sinner because she had an incestious relationship with her father when she was a schoolgirl, though she did not at the time know he was her father. Her mother was a dancer, unmarried, and left her daughter when the girl was 12... that was the start of the incestious relationship. Walter believed his deformaties were because his mother's womb was "tainted". He had a great distaste for women of lower class because of this. According to his sister, a humanitarian who wrote a very censored biography of her childhood, Walter was an obsessive and often violent little boy. He was wicked smart, but often drew violent images, even as a child. He was obsessed with Shakespeare and often forced his friends and siblings to act out some of the more unpleasent scenes. He was a very controlling person. He dominated everybody, even his own mother. He was unreasonable, but very rational. He rationalized everything. He did not abide by rules. He often changed rules of games to suit his purpose. He was cruel to other children and even teachers. He believed nobody was as smart as he was. He was meticulous, often drawing small pictures on a grid and then using mathmatics to enlarge the grid and the picture in it to make sure he didn't lose anything. All of his paintings were based in grids or formulas. He did not paint from his imagination. He painted what he saw. He was arrogant, felt no compassion for others or remorse over anything he'd done, and was manipulative. These are main traits of a psychopathic killer. Add rage, such as the kind one would have for feeling intense sexual desire but having no way to fulfill it, and you have a serial killer on your hands.
Scotland Yard recieved hundreds of Ripper letters, and the general theory was that most of them were fake since the handwriting differed, the spelling was impeccable in some and atrocious in others, the grammar was hit or miss. Patricia Cornwell got a handwriting expert to look at letters Sickert wrote to his friends and family and the numerous Ripper letters. Most of them were matched to Sickert. The atrocious spelling is a forced attempt to spell wrong, as when one misspells a word it is usually done phonetically and the misspell is the same throughout. However, in most of the Ripper letters, the he misspells the same word two or three different ways in the same letter. He would misspell a simple word like 'begin' but would properly spell words such as 'examination' and 'executed'. Many of the Ripper letters had sketches in them, sketches that showed up on napkins or papers Walter Sickert had drawn on and guarded in one of his many studios. Some of the papers dated before the letters. Some of the letters Ripper signed with R.St. or W.St. or W.R.St. and these have proved to be authentic Ripper letters. Sickert often signed his letters to friends using those abbreviations. His full name was Walter Richard Sickert. He was taunting the police. Giving them more and more clues that he knew they could not possibly solve. He signed many of his letters "Catch me if you can". Ripper needed the thrill of killing and killing but not being caught. Ripper thought he was smarter than everybody. That nobody in the world could figure out who he was because he was too smart for them. Some of the letters were signed "Mr. Nemo" and that was Sicket's stage name. It means "Mr. Nobody". Letters kept coming long after the Ripper murders "stopped", well into the 1900's. The police immediately dismissed them as fakes without even looking, since they thought the killing spree was over.
The Ripper wore disguises to cover his true identity, of that everyone is almost certain. Sickert was an actor as well as a painter. He had ample supply of stage make-up, wigs, false mustaches, costumes... everything anybody would need to change his appearance, even his height if he wanted. Sickert had it all and knew how to properly use it. He carried around a Gladstone bag, much like a medical doctor's bag, that could easily hold a change of clothes. He liked to go to the theatre at night and "take the long way home" after a show. He'd sometimes disapear for days into one of his many studios that even his wives didn't know where they were. Most of his studios were later revealed to be in or around the East End, where the murders took place. Once, in the early 1900's, Sickert "went crazy" one night and dragged his wife and her friend out into the cold fog. It was in September. He dressed up in a hat and long coat, grabbed his Gladstone Bag, and led his wife and friend through the streets of the East End at a "maddening pace" stopping briefly at only five points... the five places the Ripper's victims were found.
Now, the crime scenes were not exactly private matter. In fact, as more murders happened, residents living next to a crime scene would often charge admittance to see the bloody scene after the body had been carted away. The details were reported in newspapers, but the pictures of the victims were not. Descriptions of their appreance were not very well done, if done at all. So very few people know what the women looked like. The only ones who would know what the prostitutes looked like AFTER death were the family that identified the body, the police, and the murderer himself. Walter Sickert painted numerous paintings in the early 1900's depicting grizzly murder scenes, or scenes of women with "shadowy" figures standing behind them, faces peering out of the shadows. Some of his paintings were meant to disguise death, but they look remarkably similar to Ripper crime scenes. Most of the dead women in his paintings, or women with faces in the shadows, look frighteninly like portraits of the murdered prostitutes. He did a painting in 1908 titled Jack the Ripper's Bedroom. He had painted his own bedroom. Look at Summer Afternoon and without even thinking to look for a crime scene, it looks like a man sitting on the bed of a dead woman, in a scarely similar position as some of the Whitechapel victims. Ennui has the telling part in the background, in a painting within the painting.
It is also believed that the Ripper murders did not stop after number 5. They simply stopped being attributed to him, as they started to happen sporatically all over England and France, where Sickert spent a great deal of his time. Patricia Cornwell researched numerous prostitutes that had their throats slit, where they died and where they lived. Many of them died within miles of wherever Sickert happened to be living at the time.
Patricia Cornwell has DNA evidence and is trying to get more. What she has so far is not entirely conclusive and I have yet to fully understand DNA. But I'm working on that, and when I can get a better understanding and therefore, a better ability to explain the DNA evidence they've collected, I'll do so. If you don't want to wait, read the book! She explains everything much better than I have. I'm still doing my own research into Walter Sickert, but I must say, the more I learn about the man, the more he sounds like he really was Jack the Ripper. The more and more I look at his paintings, the more they scare me. He was not a sane man, whether he was Jack the Ripper or not.
So there are some of the theories in the book. Read it for yourself. Do your own research. Come to your own conclusions. I, myself, believe she may be right.
I will warn you now. If, after reading that, you decide to read the book, don't read it when you are alone or at night. The facts were scary before, but now that she's got a plausible suspect, they are even more frightening. I've scared myself silly before with that book. I spent all last week sitting up until 10:30 when Jeff would get home because the book and my research into Sickert himself was enough to scare me silly. Also, try to have some pleasant background music on. Nothing haunting or deep... something silly and upbeat. It'll help. Just trust me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-14 08:34 am (UTC)And that's a very interesting theory. Hmmm. Yeah, a lot to think about there.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-14 10:57 am (UTC)